


How Jack Zimmermann Saved the Haus from the Entire Football Team

by RascalBot



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Halloween episode, Mario Kart, Paintball, a wee bit of Bitty/Jack in one section, fan speculation, real smooth Zimmermann well done, snowball fights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2851163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RascalBot/pseuds/RascalBot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How DID their fearless captain save the Haus from the entire football team?  Five possible scenarios in which Jack Zimmermann saves the day, sometimes even on purpose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Jack Zimmermann Saved the Haus from the Entire Football Team

**Author's Note:**

> Based on my speculation after reading [this extra](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/92877878702). Five possible ideas, all absolutely ridiculous. 
> 
> Love and thanks, as always, to Ngozi, for making these characters and this comic. And apologies to same, for this thing I have made.

I.

The frosty morning air stung in Bitty’s Georgia-bred lungs. He’d lost a mitten somewhere, and his fingers were numb with cold. He crouched behind the ancient wicker furniture on the Haus porch, struggling to catch his breath, while Ransom and Holster covered him from behind the railing. Shitty was shouting rallying cries from the stairs.

But it would be no use. The football team was almost at the foot of the porch steps, snowballs in hand.

It had been a dirty ambush. Most of the hockey team had gathered that morning to make as many snowmen as they could fit in their yard before breakfast. Bitty had just been putting the finishing touches on his snowman (it was wearing one of his old aprons) when a deep battle cry cut through the air and a snowball had knocked his hat into a drift. The battle had been fierce, but the hockey team was simply unprepared, and most of them had fled back into the Haus.

“What do they want from us?” Bitty whispered to Ransom, who was furiously packing snow in wooly-gloved hands.

“It’s retribution,” Ransom answered, wincing as Shitty took a snowball to the face.

“Yeah, we kicked their asses last year,” Holster explained, sending two at the enormous halfback in rapid succession.

Shitty was struggling to scoop up some ammo. “We’ll go down fighting, men!” he shouted, flinging armfuls of snow at the footballers as they reached the porch steps. “Never give up, nev- ow! Son of a bitch!”

And then there was the sound of an ancient window, painted shut and ill-fitted to its frame, straining to be opened.

The football team looked up.

With a mighty push, the window shot open, slamming it into the top of the frame. It caused a jolt strong enough to send the snow balanced on the lip of the roof sliding over the edge, and onto anyone who was unfortunate enough to be standing beneath it, near the porch steps. The footballers who were not caught in the sudden barrage stared upwards, only to see two frightened bats expelled from the newly opened window hurtling toward them at speed. Shrieking, the remaining footballers fled, leaving their teammates struggling with the snow covering their faces and sliding down the backs of their coats.

Jack leaned out his open window. “I don’t know how they keep getting in here,” he explained apologetically, as the hockey team advanced into the yard to stare up at him. He looked down at the snow-covered footballers, and the stunned expressions on his teammate’s faces. “Is something going on?”

In the end it was ruled as a draw, as the football team had retreated, but bats were probably illegal in snowball fights.

II.

“Why, hello there, Bitty! And may I wish you a happy Halloweekend!”

Bitty winced. “Ugh, Holster, that accent is terrible. No one from Georgia actually sounds like that.”

Holster leaned over Bitty to adjust his hair in the bathroom mirror. “I didn’t have much time to practice. Three of my classes had quizzes this week.”

Bitty gave his wig one more tap (why Shitty just happened to have a Thor wig lying around was always going to bother him) and picked up his hammer. “It’s just a Halloween costume. I’m sure you can talk normally and everyone will get it anyway. At least, everyone who watches 30 Rock.”

There was a clattering of footsteps outside the bathroom door, and Ransom hurried in, shutting the door quickly behind him. His bare legs protruded from beneath his white lab coat, held securely shut in one tight fist. “Dudes. I’m only gonna ask this once. Did one of you take my sexy doctor shorts and replace them with a pink thong?”

Holster and Bitty exchanged blank looks.

“Goddammit!” Ransom shouted after a moment. “Ghosts are not real!”

“Come on, Rans.” Holster gently took his roommate by the arm. “I have a pair of biking shorts you can wear. C’mon.”

As they ascended the stairs toward the second floor, Shitty burst in, clad in nothing but a giant Styrofoam wrecking ball. “Bits!” he shouted unnecessarily in the tiny bathroom. “We’ve got a problem! The entire football team is on its way here with the whole fucking Stop and Shop aisle of toilet paper!”

“Oh my goodness.” Bitty tried to picture this. “How can they carry-“

“Bro, they’re gonna TP the shit outta the Haus!” Shitty shouted, waving his arms. The Styrofoam ball wobbled dangerously. “I mean, they do it every year, but this is outrageous! It’ll take us weeks to clean up! It’s like they’re trying to get us back for that one time that we saran-wrapped every doorway in their townhouse and filled their common room with packing peanuts or something!”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” Bitty exclaimed, hurrying to the window to see if the football team was in view.

“I don’t know, bro, but we’ve got to do something! We’re the last line of defense against gratuitous Haus vandalism until Lardo gets back! C’mon, let’s go ask Jack.”

“Jack? Does he want to be bothered—“

“Sure he does. Come on.”

Shitty dragged the protesting Bitty up the stairs and let himself into Jack’s room. “Ah, Shits, what the hell?” Bitty heard from down the hall. He hurried to the doorway. Jack was at his desk, textbook open, with an incredulous look on his face. Shitty had collapsed onto Jack’s bed in a dramatic pose.

“Jack. The football team. Toilet paper. It’s happening, brah! We’re getting the TP of the century they promised us!”

“Oh, for— see, I told you to leave their townhouse alone.”

“Jack, come on, you’re the brains of this operation! How are we defending our precious Haus?”

Jack rolled his eyes and shot Bitty a look. Bitty gestured helplessly toward Shitty, who had flung his arm across is brow in a mock swoon.

There was a moment’s pause. Jack sat looking at his hands for a moment. “Shits, weren’t you going to use a balloon for your wrecking ball?” he asked finally.

“Couldn’t get it big enough, man.”

“But do you still have the balloons?”

Shitty sat up. “I do indeed.”

Jack glanced out the window. “It’s a pretty warm night. They probably won’t get hypothermia.”

Shitty’s grin would have made the Cheshire Cat proud. “Bits. To my room.”

When the football team arrived, arms full of unwrapped toilet paper ready to be thrown, they were met by a barrage of water balloons, filled hastily at Shitty and Jack’s bathroom sink. Some of them took to their heels, while others grappled for more rolls to hurl in response, but they were unprepared and were forced to retreat, swearing revenge.

Shitty crowed triumphantly and climbed halfway out the window to the roof, becoming unfortunately wedged by his costume. “Victory is ours!” He fell back inside. “Fuck! That was a close one.”

Bitty glanced at Jack’s door and saw Jack peering out at them from his desk, the ghost of a smile on his face.

“See?” Shitty said quietly. “I knew he’d save us.”

“So.” Bitty looked out the window. “Now instead of a building covered in toilet paper, we have just as much toilet paper in one soggy mass on our front yard.”

Shitty patted his shoulder affectionately. “Still a win, Bits. Still a win.”

III.

The shrieks of triumph from the hockey team could be heard for miles at the conclusion of the somewhat-annual football vs. hockey Mario Kart tournament.

The boys rushed into the Haus, a stunned looking Jack Zimmermann hoisted upon Ransom and Holster’s shoulders. Somewhere in the thirty seconds between the victory and their entrance, Shitty had abandoned most of his clothes, striding triumphantly at the head of the crowd now in a pair of She-Hulk boxer-briefs. “Tonight,” he bellowed, “we pay tribute to our glorious captain! Our captain, who emerged victorious from the tie breaking, sudden death, captain vs. captain Rainbow Road showdown! As he does not drink, we shall drink in his name! Gentlemen, the kegs!”

Five minutes later, the Eighth Somewhat-Annual Undefeated Champions of Mario Kart party was in full swing, and Bitty was somehow already taking a perfectly baked pie out of the elderly oven. “Here you go, Jack,” he ventured brightly but shyly, setting a large piece on a plate in front of the team captain. “You deserve it – that was some of the most incredible driving I’ve ever seen, tell the truth.”

Jack stared at the pie. “Bittle,” he said hoarsely, “I’m terrible at Mario Kart.”

Bitty laughed. “Oh come on, Jack, we were all there.”

“I had no idea what I was doing! I was just hitting buttons! I mean, the only time I’ve ever played was that time just before winter break, when Shitty insisted I prepare…”

Bitty wrinkled his brow. “But… you hit every speed boost on the track.”

“I was just swerving! I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“You blue-shelled their captain and took the lead.”

“I hit the wrong button. I didn’t even know I had a blue shell.”

“You… you went off the track on that shortcut that no one even knew was there!”

Jack furrowed his brow. “I might have had my eyes closed at that part.”

Bitty stared at him, and then snorted with laughter.

Jack frowned. “What?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Jack.” Bitty pushed the slice of pie closer to him. “It just… it all looked so impressive. But still, you did win, and that’s what matters.”

“But everyone is, you know… toasting me and stuff.”

Bitty shrugged. “Let them. A victory is a victory. Eat your pie.”

Jack confessed the same thing to Shitty later that night, who had known all along but declared it to be “even fucking cooler that way.”

IV.

The remainder of the hockey team huddled behind the sparse cover afforded them by the dilapidated fence and a growth of scrubby bushes. The path between the Haus and the football frat was strewn with obstacles that had served them well as places of concealment, but they’d lost so much ground that their only hope was to retreat practically into their backyard. They had whittled the football team down to five men, but they themselves were only three, and one of them was Bitty, who had never even held a paintball gun before.

“Holster, would you pull yourself together?” Shitty hissed, peering through the slats in the fence for enemies. “We’re supposed to be in stealth mode!”

Holster was holding Ransom’s goggles, which were spattered now with flecks of blue, wearing a miserable expression. “He pushed me out of the way, Shits. It should have been me. It should have been me, Justin!” he shouted toward the Haus.

Shitty clamped a hand over his mouth. “We’ve all lost good men in the field, soldier, but we’ve got to keep our heads!”

Bitty stared between them. “And… Ransom’s fine. He’s in the Haus right now washing his shirt.”

Neither Shitty nor Holster seemed to hear him.   “Right. It was Reynolds and McIntyre that cornered us here, and we took them out, so that means that the rest of them are somewhere in that stretch… but we can’t move to gain any ground without putting ourselves in the open for too long. Dammit!” Shitty pounded the fence with a war-hardened fist. “We’re pinned down. If only we hadn’t lost Zimmermann; he’s our best marksman!”

Bitty peeked through the slats of the fence. “Are we sure he’s down? I mean, we didn’t see…”

Shitty placed a hand on Bitty’s shoulder. “There’s no way he could have gotten out of that dead end,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, son.”

“You’re only three years older than me.”

“So here’s our game plan.” Shitty pulled the other two into a huddle. “One of us creates a distraction. The other two head for cover – that discarded sofa, there, and those trash barrels, there. Then when they make a move to take out the distraction, the two on either side of the path take shots at them until they fall or we do. Issue with this is, being the distraction is definitely a suicide mission, so we should draw straws or – Holtzy?”

Holster was strapping Ransom’s goggles on dramatically. “I’ll do it,” he declared.

Shitty gave him a nod. “Are you sure about this, soldier?”

Holster nodded back. “Absolutely.”

“Bits. You take the sofa. As soon as Holster clears the fence we start running, got it?” Bitty nodded, clutching his weapon tightly.

Holster stood to his full height and cocked his gun. “Give ‘em hell for me, boys,” he said in a low, dramatic voice, striding toward the center of the path. “Now go!”

Shitty and Bitty sprinted for their respective covers as Holster strode toward enemy territory. The remaining football players rose from their hiding places behind trees and a dumpster and an old lawn chair. Holster opened fire. “That’s for Ransom, you sons of bitches!” he bellowed.

From the Haus, a faint cry of “yeah, buddy!” could be heard.

Holster actually managed to take down the one behind the lawn chair as he abandoned his cover at the sight of Shitty and Bitty’s mad dash. Moments later, Holster took four splashes of blue to the chest.

Bitty threw himself to the ground behind the sofa as the football team advanced, putting Shitty and Bitty into their range. Shitty hit one in the shin, but was forced to cower behind his trash barrels when met with a hail of paint-fire from the rest of the team. Bitty reached his gun around the corner of the sofa and fired blindly, missing all of them.

The football team split into pairs and advanced, each to a side, guns raised.

“Hey!”

The shout came from down the path. Both pairs turned. Bitty crawled out enough to see around the sofa.

Jack Zimmermann fired four shots in rapid succession, hitting each football player squarely in the chest.

“Not to my team, you don’t,” he said darkly.

“Holy shit. Holy shit!” Shitty leapt from behind his trash barrels. “Jack FUCKING Zimmermann! You beautiful bastard!” He threw his arms around Jack and planted a kiss on his cheek. “And wait, that means we won. We won!” He rounded on the still-stunned football players. “We won! That means YOU guys owe US a new coat of paint for the Haus porch _and_ three kegs at the time of our choosing!” Shitty sat down in the middle of the sidewalk. “Holy shit. Jack Zimmermann. How did you escape?”

“I’ll tell you about it when we get home.” Jack strode over to Bitty and held out a hand to help him to his feet. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

Bitty looked up into the blue depths of Jack’s eyes. “I-I am now.”

There may have been violins.

Shitty rolled his eyes. “Aaaand, I’m gonna go get pizza rolls. Who else wants pizza rolls? Holtzy? How ‘bout you boys? It’s on the Haus. Come on.”

V.

It was a beautiful spring morning, and Bitty was hard at work on a lemon meringue pie. Shitty was ostensibly helping, which in this case meant flipping through Bitty’s recipe book and adding commentary to whatever he saw. “Man, what is this extra spice pumpkin pie? Pumpkin pie is nothing but spices. Oooh. Mint brownies? Bro. Those sound fuckin’ orgasmic. Can you make those next?”

“You pick me up some mint extract from murder Stop-and-Shop and I’ll see what I can do.” Bitty frowned at his recipe card. “I think my mother made a mistake when she wrote this one.”

Their moment of peace was cut short when Ransom and Holster scrambled into the kitchen. “Shits! Hide us!”

“Whoa.” Shitty sat up straight. “What happened?”

“We glued googly eyes to all the football teams’ jockstraps,” Ransom explained, “and now they’re out for revenge!”

“Which we only did in the first place because they painted our toilet to look like Mike Wazowski,” Holster added.

Bitty furrowed his brow. “When did they have time—“

“Come on, Bits, let’s see if we can’t resolve this peacefully.” Ignoring Bitty’s protests, Shitty dragged him onto the front porch, where Jack, dressed in nothing but his running shorts, was propping a step ladder up beneath the overhead porch light.

“What’s going on?” he asked as the two of them passed.

“Ransom and Holster got into a prank war with the football team,” Bitty explained, “and we’re the mediators—oh, there they are…”

A fair percentage of the football team was approaching their front porch. “Where are they?” the team captain asked bitterly.

Shitty held up his hands. “Now, gentlemen. I think we can all agree that we want a peaceful resolution to this.”

“Speak for yourself!” called one linebacker. “My junk looks like Elmo!”

The advanced on the Haus. “How about an exchange of some kind?” Shitty proposed. “You walk away, we deliver a batch of mint fuckin’ brownies to your doorstep. What do you say?”

This gave them pause. “I don’t like mint stuff,” the halfback said finally. The advance continued.

Shitty shrugged. “I think this one’s a lost cause, Bits. Rans and Holtzy are on their own.”

Jack was watching the proceedings with mild interest. “What exactly did they do?” he asked.

“They put eyeballs on our jocks!” declared the team captain.

“We’re gonna silly string the shit outta them,” the linebacker added, brandishing his can fiercely.

Jack sighed. “Knock yourselves out.” He began to ascend the ladder.

The football team stopped.

Jack reached up to unhook the porch light fixture, leaning forward to keep his balance.

Cans of silly string clattered to the ground as the football team stared up with a reverential expression. The halfback began weeping softly.

Bitty turned to follow their gaze, and Shitty clapped a hand over his eyes. “Don’t look, Bits! It’s bright like the sun!”

Jack took another step up the ladder, and a collective sigh spread through the football crowd.

“Shitty, what’s happening?” Bitty whispered more urgently.

Shitty reached up to brush a single tear from the corner of his eye. “ _He showed them the booty_.”


End file.
